Perceptions of public drinking water in post-Flint America: field experiments in a socio-economically disadvantaged neighborhood
Date
2018
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Perceptions of the safety of public drinking water provided by municipal water utilities in the U.S. have likely been impacted by water contamination crises such as the one in Flint, Michigan. The implications of these negative perceptions weigh heaviest on socio-economically disadvantaged communities who face costly decisions to substitute, often times safe, tap water with bottled water. Our field experiments involved the collection of tap water samples from 122 households in a socio-economically disadvantaged community in Delaware – this community receives water from a drinking water utility that has no prior violations of the primary drinking standards. These experiments used an auction design to provide the first quantitative measure of community members’ perceptions of their own drinking water. We then tested the effectiveness of two different types of water tests (a do-it-yourself home test and a professional laboratory test). Our results revealed that none of the water tested were in violation of the U.S. primary drinking water standards for tested water quality parameters. However, participants in the community displayed substantial concern about the safety of their drinking water - the average amount of money we had to pay participants to drink their own water was $8.69. However, both water tests significantly reduced this concern (to $2.87 in the do-it-yourself home test treatment and to $3.72 in the professional laboratory test treatment). These experiments revealed that simple do-it-yourself home tests may be a cost-effective way to restore trust in public drinking water utilities that have no prior violations of the drinking water standards.